Building a $7B Media Empire: Billionaire Larry Namer on E! Entertainment & Reinventing Success

Key takeaways

• Namer says passion alone may not provide a sustainable living. He advises finding work you are good at, developing skill through effort, and making sure the business can support you.
• When moving from New York to Los Angeles for a cable role, Namer asked for far more than his current pay, housing in Liberace's former home and a car with a mobile phone. The company eventually asked how quickly he could move.
• Namer says to assume people are lying until they demonstrate otherwise. If someone is shown to lie, he advises against doing business with them again.
• Namer and his partner started E! after others said the idea was impossible. When they could not raise the $60 million to $100 million they thought a network required, they began with $2.5 million, 11 employees and 31 interns.
• Limited funds pushed Namer's team to find alternatives, including buying equipment from a company that made sales training tapes. He describes necessity as a reason to invent new approaches.
• E! presented Hollywood in a more informal way, including asking Tom Cruise about his shoes. Namer says this perspective helped make the coverage feel like viewers were seeing something they were not supposed to.
• Namer says the show Talk Soup ran for 26 years. He also saw potential in filming Howard Stern's radio studio, describing the concept as an ensemble sitcom rather than a radio show.
• Namer recounts not selling the domain television.com for an offer he considered too low, then operating a video site that lost money when online advertising rates fell. He says founders should watch economic, political and technology conditions alongside the idea itself.
• Namer says working with large public companies takes patience and thick skin, and that he draws on his experience at Time Inc. to understand how they evaluate ideas. His team often preferred to start companies and sell them later.
• Namer says he reinvents himself about every seven years. His book Offscript pairs anecdotes from different phases of his life with recipes that inspired him.